Best Laptop Under $750

[Pethegreat]

Another thing to consider is that once you hit that 1000-1200 range, you could get a cheap laptop (such as that Asus eee pc thing) and a decent desktop (say $550 to build + $200 monitor) and you have spent $1150 and now have portable internet/word processor and more gaming power.

I have a decent desktop as of now(look at sig). I don't do much in the way of PC gaming since I have an xbox 360. The most I would do would be some Sim City 4, Halo PC, and maybe Counter Strike.

What I am most worried about are the programs I may need to run. I have heard that people bought low end PC's for college and ended up getting screwed when a class was using a CAD or another computer intensive program.

[sloggerkhan]

I'm in college as a CS major at the University of Arizona. I started in engineering and switched majors. My experience with 3-D cad like solidworks or solid edge is that you don't need super amazing 3-D to run it, but complex models can get slow no matter what kind of system you have.

Right now my only computer (see sig) has older dedicated 3-D 128 mb and I've never had problems running anything besides games.

I do sorta think since you have a desktop, it's better to go for portable with the laptop.

And I think 7150/6150 might be okay for you (if not so much games), a 8400 would be significantly better, but at the same time much slower than an 8600. So kinda your call.

[mips]

I would also like to have XP on it. I would never use it unless I need it for some programs where Wine won't work. I am open to getting something with vista, wiping that, and putting XP on.

Why? Just install you WinXP in vitualbox, no need to dualboot and quicker to access if you do ever need it.

[dustigroove]

Hey, just following up... did you end up deciding on one laptop or another?

Cheers,

[helliewm]

I have a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo PI 2515 15 inch laptop. Its light, everything works out of the box with Ubuntu. It does have a Intel X3100 graphics card there is a work round for Compiz for this but the graphics card has never given me any problems. Mine has a Core 2 Duo 1.5, 2 gig ram and 160 hard disc. I bought it this summer.

I also bought a Dell Inspiron 17 inch this summer too as a Desktop replacement the Dell is nice but I prefer the Fujitsu.


The Fujitsu is completely Ubuntu friendly.

Helen